“Because he thinks your way?”
“Sure. But say, mam, I guess you’re waiting to serve out that food and I’m holding things up.”
The woman shook her head.
“The Kid ain’t down from the corrals yet. We don’t eat till she comes.”
The man nodded and made no attempt to take his departure.
“I see,” he said reflectively. Then he laughed.
“Say, mam,” he went on with a gesture of deprecation, “you’ve got me guessing good. I’m just a gold man an’ not a highbrow logician or guesser of riddles. You’re here with your bunch of God’s Blessings, as you call these dandy kids of yours. You talk of corrals as if you were running a swell cattle ranch. You talk of the Kid’s father who was Marty Le Gros, a missionary, murdered by Euralians eighteen years ago. An’ you haven’t even spoke as if you had any sort of name yourself. Well, as I said I’m just a gold man chasing up a creek you don’t reckon to hold anything better than mud and rock, but I’m liable to be a neighbour of yours for something like a year at least. And if it isn’t putting you about I’d just love to sit and listen to anything you feel like handing out.”
It was the way it was said. It was so frankly ingenuous and inviting. Hesther looked into the stranger’s grey eyes, and no question remained in her mind. So she laughed in response and shook her greying head.
“Say, living on the edge of the Arctic has quite a way of cutting out the manners we’re brought up to,” she said at once. “I’m Mrs. McLeod, and my man, Jim, as I said, was factor at Fort Cupar. Well, he died.”
For one thoughtful moment she glanced into the stew pot. Then she dipped some steaming beans from a boiler and emptied them into the stew. After that she turned again to the waiting man in the chair.